James Kirkup is The Telegraph's Executive Editor (Politics). He was previously the Telegraph's Political Editor and has worked at Westminster since 2001.

Wow. Is this John Bercow's most over-the-top attack on a minister yet? The Speaker has gone postal on Philip Hammond over the fact that MPs were not given documents relating to his Commons statement about Army reserves.

This was Mr Bercow to Mr Hammond:

The content of statements is not a matter for me and I take no view of them but the administration of this matter has been woefully inadequate and frankly utterly incompetent. I've not known a worse example during my tenure as Speaker.

Although he has expressed himself in his usual understated terms, I hope he genuinely does feel some sense of embarrassment and contrition at what has been a total mishandling by his department, for which the right honourable gentleman is solely responsible. It's as simple as that.

For a minister who has built his reputation on efficiency, that's quite something. Mr Hammond duly apologised:

First of all I am indeed embarrassed by what appears to have just occurred and as you would expect I will be investigating precisely what has happened and I will write to you to let you know what has gone wrong this afternoon.

I understood that copies of the statement and copies of the spreadsheet would be distributed as soon as I sat down. I apologise that did not happen.